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Sunday, November 07, 2004

Monty Python's Life of Brian vrs Theo van Gogh

I was watching a DVD of Monty Python’s Life of Brian last night while doing yet another grad school paper on developing markets in China. My mind kept wondering back to the good old days of high school (which I don’t really remember to well) and how much controversy was stirred up by the release of this movie. People boycotted movie theaters, the Pope called for believers to boycott the movie. My church advised us we would all be going to hell if we dared watch this sacrilegious concoction. Of course it was the position of my church that rock and roll was evil, dancing was a sin, and teenagers were inherently evil, so nothing we ever wanted to do was officially approved by the church, but the Life of Brian was the ultimate sin, the hype went on for weeks and lasted the whole time the movie was in the theaters.

I snuck out and watched it with my friends at a drive-in theater in Buena Park. It was, and is, a total laugh fest. I can understand how people would be offended by the movie, but I can never understand how people would be motivated to commit and act of violence because of a movie. There were fears of violence when Life of Brian was released, just as there were fears of violence when Theo van Gogh release his short film critical of Islam. The only difference is the Christians are not noted for their violence (except maybe the anti-abortion nutballs) and Muslims are noted for violence and for intolerance of criticism.

It’s hard to believe somebody would try to take out Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Terry Jones, or Eric Idle for poking fun at Jesus. At one time it would have been hard believe that any nutball would do something as vicious as murdering Theo van Gogh, but today all bets are off. If Monte Python were to tackle Mohammad, with say a Life of Ammed parody, they would have to live the remader of their lives in protective custody. What a shame.

Btw – Monty Python if you are listening, do the Mohammad parody, I understand there are sheep involved.